Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde

I wrote so much about The Harlot by the Side of the Road and it’s been so long since I’ve had a chance to write here that I read another whole book in the interim. I wish I could say that I enjoyed it as much as the last one, but alas, I did not. I’m reluctant to cast the first stone on this kind of thing, but I think Hyde forgot that Reuben’s face was scarred about halfway through the book. It stopped coming up as a dramatic element and people who met him for the first time didn’t recoil or even mention it at all. And Reuben is black? And Arlene is white? So why did they ask Kevin Spacey to play Reuben in the movie? Thanks for the confidence, Hollywood. Guess we’re not ready for interracial love, huh?